One Man Star Wars Trilogy @ Proctors, 1/26/13

SCHENECTADY – Charles Ross must be a lonely guy. First of all, he’s Canadian. Secondly, he’s been touring his “One Man Star Wars Trilogy” for a dozen years; and as a friend of mine would say, “that’s not a good way to meet girls.”

Thankfully, Ross has turned his geekdom into a profitable business, and the “Trilogy” is actually celebrating its 12th anniversary this weekend at Proctors.

The show is quite physically demanding, with Ross not only doing virtually all of the important characters, but also providing incidental music, all manner of aircraft sounds and the odd explosion or two.

Each film of the classic trilogy (which now translates to “Episode IV: A New Hope,” “Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back,” and “Episode VI: Return of the Jedi”) is delivered in a 20-minute spasm of activity that begins with a mock on the famous scrolling introduction and ends with the familiar theme music.

Between those poles, Ross breathlessly runs through scenes that are seemingly arc-welded in the American imagination – Luke Skywalker speeding through the canyons of the Death Star; the gnome-like Yoda spewing sage wisdom in a desolate swamp; and Jabba the Hut grobble, grobble, grobbling at a bikini-clad Princess Leia in his coarse, hoarse space pirate lingo.

Amazingly, Ross creates all of this without the use of any props, sound cues, sets or costumes and only the merest of lighting elements.

If nothing else, the Spartan production keeps costs down and profits up.

Saturday afternoon, Ross, who has been at Proctors with the show before, seemed to be running on autopilot much of the time.

He also seemed a bit snippy with the audience, really challenging those with cameras, phones and short attention spans. Granted, it must be incredibly difficult to run the entire show alone, but his stageside manner didn’t ingratiate him to the paying crowd.

Like “Potted Potter,” the two-man spoof of the “Harry Potter” series of books and films which played at Proctors earlier in the month, “OMSWT” actually works best when Ross is riffing on the material instead of merely repeating it. But he doesn’t go to that well anywhere near as often as the “Potter” gang.

Even a dozen years on, he may want to reconsider because his biggest laughs and responses certainly came from off-the-cuff remarks rather than the more heavily scripted sequences.

And because he’s the only one onstage, even some of the asides Saturday were rather insular, as though he was speaking to himself, not the crowd.

“One Man Star Wars” almost – scratch that, absolutely — requires that the audience be familiar with the material beforehand. Ross never slows to explain the action, instead rightly assuming that the audience’s inner nerd has brought them to the venue by (heh, heh) force.

If you know the movies, you will enjoy Ross’s wild ride. Just do your best not to catch his attention.

ONE MAN STAR WARS TRILOGY

Performance reviewed: 1:30 p.m. Saturday.

Where: GE Theatre, Proctors, 432 State Street, Schenectady

Running time: 60 minutes.

Continues: 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets: $25

Info: 346-6204; http://www.proctors.org

Michael Eck is a freelance writer from Albany and a frequent contributor to the Times Union.